Pictures of different people imitating a trendy/familiar position or action. In the sample images below, you can see people doing poses such as planking, owling, Hadoukening (base from the manga and anime Dragon Ball), Vadering (base from a book and movie series character, Darth Vader), Pottering (base from a book and movie series character, Harry Potter) and Mary Poppins-ing (base from the movie and book series character, Mary Poppins).

Video Memes

Imitating a mainstream footage or extracting a part of it and then altering or putting a twist on it (e.g. dubbing it or changing the subtitles). Video memes are typically manifested through mini-animations or video clips such as gif. The sample gif below is a scene from Disney’s, Mulan.

Image or Macro Memes

If photo memes involve different people doing a trendy/familiar position or action, image or macro memes are familiar images (photo or cartoon) with different captions. The sample images below are of some of the most popular image memes used in the Interner (Top left and right: Condescending Wonka and One Does Not Simply, Middle left and right: Grumpy Cat and Futurama Fry, Bottom left and right: Most Interesting Man in the World and Philosoraptor).

Word Memes

Good examples of a word meme are Twitter and Instagram hashtags. A hashtag is a word or phrase written after a pound sign (#). If a lot of people use this hashtag, it can be ranked as “trending” in the social media platform it is posted. People can add their own twist on existing ones and can make their own wherever and whenever. Below are examples of hashtags with “business” as the theme.